


Exhale Desire

by Project0506



Series: Rare's the Same As Half-Baked [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24143179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Cody, Anakin, and the aftermath of a devastating engagement as Commanders of the Gar.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Rare's the Same As Half-Baked [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742290
Comments: 10
Kudos: 123





	Exhale Desire

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Twenty One Pilots 'Car Radio'
> 
> My lungs will fill and then deflate  
> They fill with fire, exhale desire  
> I know it's dire my time today

General Kenobi's report from their last, disastrous campaign lands in Cody’s for-review box twenty six hours after the Republic declared victory.

The language is stark: their losses steep, the cost far too high for the little they managed to scrape in advantage. Every remark is laid out in brutal, pointed detail, the whisper of advice-ignored threaded through every accusing paragraph. General Kenobi had been against this engagement, had argued it all the way up to contact and was overruled at every step.

Cody knows this won’t change anything. The losses were nearly all clones, though what few few civilian casualties there were will be mourned. It’s a waste of the effort spent to write it, the bandwidth to send it, but it would be perfectly in character for General Kenobi to send it anyway. To accuse those who would turn a blind eye to the suffering of the GAR troops.

But General Kenobi is in a bacta tank, intubated and his heart on a pulse control in case of arrhythmia. There’s no chance that he’s written anything.

(The details of the Seppies’ new charged pulse bomb and its effects on organics is highlighted in the report. It’s the only reason Cody works up the will to submit it within the required reporting window. Hopefully someone somewhere bothers to read _that_.)

The halls of every deck Cody passes echo empty. There are horrifically few survivors, and none of those left behind are much inclined to fill the void left by those marching far away with chatter.

Cody’s heard some just calling it ‘marching ahead’ now. They’re all going, and soon, they say, so it’s not so very far away after all. Cody’s heart aches.

It’s been time enough that the medical bay on this level has calmed somewhat. Officers’ floor, but General Kenobi had done away with that first thing. Any injured man goes to any medical bay, and beds and resources are shared and moved wherever necessary. The rush has cleared, and the first rounds of medics are finally starting to go off shift, to find corners where they can sit and rest and not shake apart. It’s been twenty six hours since they re-boarded; triage started on the ground is complete. Whoever would survive mostly already has. Cody will get an accounting of the rest in due time. He’s not getting any better at handling it, but he’s gotten better at pretending he has.

He makes sure the ones standing down are pairing or grouping up, redirects a few to make sure of it. This isn’t a night where any brother should need to be alone.

In this kind of aftermath, no one at all should need to be alone.

“Have you eaten at all, Commander?”

They’d been told of the Jedi stoicism, back on Kamino. Disinterestedly by the _ Kaminiise _1, maliciously by the _ Cuy’val Dar _2. The Jedi believe in non-attachment, the Kaminiise had intoned, and you are designed to not interfere with their religion. The Jedi won’t love you, the Cuy’val Dar had mocked, even though you’re designed to give them everything.

Commander Skywalker doesn’t shake, but Cody can see the force of will it takes. His hair is damp, his skin scrubbed free of the mud that had been their reality for a month, but his skin is sallow and his eyes sunken. The braid that signifies his Jedi rank has been reassembled with perfect neatness, but his tunics are thrown on haphazardly. His robe barely hugs his shoulders. He hasn’t bothered with his tabards at all.

He’d been crying, at some point. Long ago; the tears are dry but there’s what’s left of salt in the corner of his eyes.

When first they’d met, Cody had spoken with Commander Skywalker for only minutes before understanding that the Kaminiise and Cuy'val Dar both lied. Anakin Skywalker loves quickly and deeply, and loss cuts him even more.

“We’re counting in the thousands,” he says, voice as dull and washed flat as his mien. “And reports are still coming in. We’re… we’re finding ones who could have still been alive when the orders to advance came. There’s-”

“Have you eaten?” Cody interrupts. He knows. He doesn’t _know_ but he’s seen enough to guess. The medics have started trying to be kind: the lists they send Cody don’t include times of death, estimated or otherwise. It doesn’t help. But neither does this.

Commander Skywalker shakes his head no, a vicious thrash as though he wants to think no more of it. “Tried,” he grunts. “Didn’t work.”

Cody doesn’t bother to ask if he’s slept.

General Kenobi’s position grants him a private medical room, a luxury on any starship even one this size. He’d be annoyed, if he were awake, but it’s for the best. Cody doesn’t want the men gawking at the General, stripped down and fitted with a terrifying array of wires and hoses to keep him alive, floating like something artificial, like something manufactured in its tank.

His burns look better, to Cody’s unpracticed eye. He doesn’t know what the readouts mean but the numbers seem mostly staying a cool blue color and he can only hope it means there’s improvement.

The rest of the General’s room is covered in holopads, in map displays, in feeds and feeds of analysis and reporting and records. Battle positions over the last month are marked, troop placement, enemy encampments, estimations of the size of the opposing forces. Notes of where the latter two differed from intelligence they’d had to argue for.

The far wall cuts the most. Simulations. Everything held the same, but Jedi placement differing. Jedi moving faster, going further, knowing more-

Cody turns off the display. Commander Skywalker twitches, his hands close around nothing, but he doesn’t protest.

They’d told Cody Jedi would never care for them. Cody was built to withstand pain, and had resigned himself to that as well.

“This won’t help.”

Commander Skywalker laughs, sharp and cutting and ragged. “ _Nothing_ will help,” he barks. “But at least this is _doing_ something.”

They’re the same rank technically, Cody and Commander Skywalker. Cody’s a clone, and expected to submit to his authority as a Jedi. But they’re still the same rank. And General Kenobi has always insisted that Jedi weren’t meant to lead a war, no matter what titles they press upon them. Right here right now, all things being equal, Cody is the superior officer. And he has a duty.

“Come on,” he says, whispers, slipping hands up the other Commander’s arms the way he wouldn’t have dared to do to a General. But Anakin Skywalker is a Commander with far less experience than Cody in taking loss, in pretending it doesn’t wound.

Cody’s lost brothers nearly every day of his life. The only difference being a Commander has brought is now he gets to know the names of some of them, sometimes.

“Come on. Let’s go. You don’t need to be alone right now.” He doesn’t need to be here staring at holodisplays imagining what he could have done to prevent the slaughter they were ordered to walk into, under the sterile blue glow of the machinery keeping his master alive. “Let’s go. Leave that, we can come back for it.”

Commander Skywalker resists, twists, shudders, imagines dozens and scores of things that need to be done, that he needs to do in General Kenobi’s name as General Kenobi’s student. They are cringed above the dregs of their last engagement, less than a day from limping their way back to Coruscant center, gutted and stinging under the congratulations of Republic Leadership who have never stood where they have. Paperwork can wait.

Cody is not ashamed to bully him. He’s had many _ vode _3 just like him, their first few times out as Commanders. Because Command is Loss and they don’t bother to teach them that back on Kamino. Hadn’t bothered to think they might need to know. Cody’s stood where he has, with Alpha-17 bullying him into berth before he could work himself to a brittle point of bone. He could do no less.

“I have you,” he soothes. Cody takes him to his own berth, presses him into Cody’s own bed and follows. Holds him there, pressed between himself and the bulkhead, while Skywalker recites the litany of things he imagines he could have affected, if only he’d known. “I know,” he says, when sadness shades to fear and anger and mixes together into something barbed and dripping venom. “I know.”

Cody feels the same, thinks the same. He’s learned how to keep from saying the same, for his own little, hard-won piece of peace of mind. He isn’t sure it helps.

It’s telling, that through it all Commander Skywalker never pushes Cody away.

For whatever is left of decorum, left of appropriateness, Cody wants to believe that Skywalker kisses him first. He thinks that might be a lie.

“I need. I need,” Skywalker begs against Cody’s lips and doesn’t know what he needs. Cody flows on top of him, presses him down, takes his mouth as fully as he gives it.

“I know,” he says, but doesn’t because Cody only knows how to go on by pushing these thoughts to some later that never comes. Skywalker’s a sweet slip of desire under Cody’s chest, coltish but enthusiastic. Desperate. Anything not to think.

“You’ll be alright,” Cody lies, because none of them ever are, and the future stretches out interminable and unshifting. Skywalker writhes like a thing brand new, like every touch is a revelation and every inch of him has been waiting only for Cody’s hands.

“I have you,” Cody proclaims and he decides that here in this moment, that much can be truth. Skywalker’s quiet like a _ vod _4 trained in dorms that held dozens, his feelings breathed in nothing more than silent, careful puffs that can’t curl so far as to be noticed.

“Let me hear you,” Cody begs. “Let me know you’re here with me. _Please_.”

It isn’t just Skywalker who shouldn’t be alone tonight.

Cody grips like a man desperate. Skywalker sings, like the same.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Kaminoans. Back  
> 2\. A group of a group of one hundred individuals summoned to train the clones on Kamino. Name lt 'Those who no longer exist'. Back  
> 3\. Brothers. Back  
> 4\. Brother. Back  
> 


End file.
